AWS re:Invent 2017 Recap and Initial Impressions

While AWS re:Invent 2017 is still fresh in our minds, here are some of the highlights of the most significant announcements.

Aurora Multi-Master/Multi-Region: This is a big deal! The concept of geographically distributed databases with multiple masters has been a long-desired solution. Why is this important?
Having additional masters allows for database writes, not just reads like the traditional read replicas that have been available. This feature enables a true multi-region, highly available solution that eliminates a single point of failure and achieves optimum performance. Previously, third party tools like Golden Gate and various log shipping approaches were required to accomplish proper disaster recovery and high availability. This will greatly simplify architectures for some that want to go active-active across regions and not just availability zones. Additionally, it will enable pilot light (and more advanced) DR scenarios for customers that are not going to be using active-active configurations.

Aurora Serverless: Aurora Serverless is an on-demand, auto-scaling configuration for the Aurora MySQL and PostgresSQL compatible database service, where the database will automatically start-up and scale up or down based on your application’s capacity needs. It will shut down when required, basically scaling down to zero when not being used. Traditionally, Aurora RDS required changing the underlying instance type to scale for database demand. This is a large benefit and cost saver for development, testing, and QA environments. Even more importantly, if your workload has large spikes in demand, then auto-scaling is a game changer in the same way that EC2 auto scaling enabled automated compute flexibility.

T2 Unlimited: T2 is one of the most popular instance types used by 2nd Watch and AWS customers, accounting for around 50% of all instances under 2nd Watch Managed Cloud Services. In the case of frequent, small and inconsistent workloads, T2 is the best price and performance option. However, one of the most common reasons that customers do not heavily leverage T2 is due to concerns related to a sustained spike in load that will deplete burstable credits and result in unrecoverable performance degradation. T2 unlimited solves this problem by essentially allowing unlimited surges over the former limits. We expect to see more customers will adopt T2 for those inconsistent workloads as a cost-effective solution. We will watch to see if this this shift is reflected in the instance type data for accounts being managed by 2nd Watch.

Spot Capacity: Spot instances are normally used as pools of compute that run standard AMIs and work on datasets located outside of EC2. This is because the instances are terminated when the spot price increases beyond your bid, and all data is lost. Now, when AWS reclaims the capacity, the instance can essentially hibernate, preserving the operating system and data, and startup again when the spot pricing is favorable. This removes another impediment in the use of spot capacity, and will be a large cost saver for environments that only need to be temporarily available.

M5 Instance Type: Given the large increase in performance of the newer processor generations, one can see large cost savings and performance improvements by migrating to a smaller sized offering of the latest instance type that meets your application’s needs. Newer instance types can also offer higher network bandwidth as well, so don’t put off the adoption of the latest products if possible.

Inter-region Peering: It’s always been possible to establish peering relationships between VPCs in the same region. Inter-region Peering uses AWS private links between VPCs in different availability zones and does not transit the open internet, eliminating VPNs, etc. This same feature is available inter-region. This makes multi-region designs cleaner and easier to implement, without having to build and configure VPN networking infrastructure to support it, which of course also needs monitoring, patching, and other maintenance. It was also announced that users of Direct Connect can now route traffic to almost every AWS region from a single Direct Connect circuit.

There were also some announcements that we found interesting but need to digest a little longer. Look for a follow up from us on these.

EKS: Elastic Container Services for Kubernetes – Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (Amazon EKS) is a managed service that makes it easy for you to run Kubernetes on AWS without needing to install, operate, and maintain your own Kubernetes clusters. Even at last years’ AWS re:Invent we heard people wondering where the support for Kubernetes was, particularly since it has become the de facto industry standard over the past several years.

GuardDuty: AWS has now added a cloud-native tool to the security toolbox. This tool utilizes “machine learning” for anomaly detection. AWS GuardDuty monitors traffic flow and API logs for your accounts, letting you establish a baseline for “normal” behavior on your infrastructure, and then watches for security anomalies. These are reported with a severity rating, and remediation for certain types of events can be automated using existing AWS tools. We will be considering the best methods of implementation of this new tool.

Fargate: Run Amazon EKS and ECS without having to manage servers or clusters.

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Obviously, there was a lot more going on and it will take some time to go through it. We will keep you up to date with our thoughts.